On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, a local seamstress, refused to obey the segregation laws and give up her seat on the bus to a white man. For this act of civil disobedience she was arrested. That arrest was the small pebble which started an avalanche ultimately leading to the end of… Read More »

I try to imagine what kind of person would “beset the just one” or would try to kill Jesus. Certainly no one like me! But then I think of Dorothy Day. How much I admired her outreach to the hungry and the homeless that continues today in the various Catholic Worker houses. Yet I confess… Read More »

One of the characteristic complaints that God expresses toward the Jewish people is that they are “stiff-necked.” I never quite got that as a criticism until I slept wrong one day and woke up with a stiff neck. When I got into the car I realized how dangerous a stiff neck could be. I had… Read More »

The Bible gives us many images of God: King of Kings, Lord of Lords. Since I don’t know many kings or lords that is not really a helpful image of God for me. Even the more beloved images, like the Good Shepherd, don’t really connect with my experience since I don’t run into shepherds very… Read More »

Jesus asked the paralytic by the pool of Bethesda, “Do you want to be well?” You can almost imagine the sick man saying “DUH, of course.” But what he does instead is make excuses for all the reasons he is not well. What Jesus is really asking him, will you do those things which will… Read More »

How did we end up here? We certainly didn’t all start from the same place. Maybe you started as Peter Prodigal and did all the good things the bad boys do. After trying this, that, and the other thing in striving for happiness you discovered that nothing worked. In fact, pretty soon you found yourself… Read More »

The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican illustrates the problem with the very human tendency to make comparisons. Is Ziva David better than Ellie Bishop? Is the pitcher we traded for better than the other? Which is the lesser of the evils that I should vote for in the next election? Jesus wants us… Read More »

In St. Mark’s gospel when Jesus is asked about the great commandment he quotes from the traditional Jewish prayer, the Shema Yisrael. If you ask Christians what constitutes the great commandment they would doubtless answer “love God and love neighbor.” What strikes me, however, is that the first command in the shema is to hear.… Read More »

“If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” Throughout the Bible — Jeremiah, the Psalms, Jesus — the image of a hardened heart is used a symbol of a spiritual problem. We know something of how our physical heart gets hardened. We call it arteriosclerosis. This disease does not happen all at once… Read More »